Shares up 2 percent
Taiwanese shares closed up 2 percent yesterday on a Wall Street rally overnight and brightening prospects for investment ties with China, dealers said.
The TAIEX index rose 145.37 points to 7,429.98 on turnover of NT$101.75 billion (US$3.14 billion). Gainers outnumbered losers 1,697 to 745, while 191 shares remained unchanged.
The market was boosted by big caps focusing on flat panels and semiconductors after Taipei said it could ease controls on high-tech investments in China by local companies while allowing further Chinese investments in Taiwan.
“The remarks certainly boosted investor confidence,” Capital Securities (群益證券) analyst Chen Yu-yu (陳育娛) said. The market, however, could cap at 7,500, Chen said.
PRC-bound exports recovering
The Bureau of Foreign Trade said Taiwan’s China-bound exports would recover next month and the rest of the year. Export orders from China started to return to positive territory in July, bureau director-general Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) told a media briefing.
Huang said the ministry intends to spend 25 percent of the annual trade promotion fund, from the current 15 percent, on sponsoring trade shows and other activities to help raise name recognition of Taiwan makers in China.
Huang said the promotion campaigns will target second-tier cities like Nanjing and Wuhan. The image improvement program can also help boost competitiveness of domestic products after Taiwan and China sign an economic cooperation framework agreement, he said.
AUO sells UMC shares
AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), Taiwan’s largest maker of liquid-crystal displays, sold 22 million shares of United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest custom-chip maker, for NT$346 million, the Hsinchu-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
AU Optronics sold the shares at an average price of NT$15.72 and made a profit of NT$113.8 million, the statement said.
Fubon cancels capital plan
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) will cancel a capital enhancement plan because of changes in market conditions and the company’s finance plans, the company said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
Last month, Fubon announced it would issue Global Depositary Receipts to increase its working capital and strengthen its finances. The company had planned to raise up to US$900 million through the issuance of new shares.
ChiNext firms attract huge bids
Ten companies scheduled to list on the ChiNext, China’s soon-to-be-launched NASDAQ-style board, said yesterday they attracted a combined 784.1 billion yuan (US$115 billion) in bids for subscriptions.
Demand for the initial public offerings’ retail tranche was high with shares in the firms, which range from software to medical equipment makers, oversubscribed by 82 to 258 times, filings to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange said.
The institutional tranche of the initial public offerings (IPO) the firms were oversubscribed by 35 to 117 times, the statements said.
The companies, which took subscriptions from retail and institutional investors on Friday, will raise a total of 6.68 billion yuan from the IPOs — more than double the 3.16 billion initially sought.
NT dollar gains on greenback
The NT dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.099 to close at NT$32.376.
A total of US$844 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
END TO SPECULATION: The hotel’s management contract has been extended, despite reports that it wanted to end its alliance with Hyatt Hotels over a deal with Riant Capital Singapore-based Hong Leong Hotel Development Ltd (豐隆大飯店股份) yesterday said it has extended a management contract to ensure the continued presence of the Grand Hyatt brand in Taipei, ending rumors that the two sides were parting ways. “We are pleased Hyatt is able to come to terms on the extension of the management contract of Grand Hyatt Taipei,” said Kwek Leng Beng (郭令明), executive chairman of City Developments Ltd (城市發展) and Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Ltd (千禧國敦酒店). Hong Leong Hotel Development is a subsidiary of Millennium, and both fall under the Hong Leong Group (豐隆集團). The Grand Hyatt Taipei (台北君悅大飯店), owned and built by
’WHITE BOX’: The open platform would give local firms access to Cisco’s cloud-based mobile network to develop 5G telecom equipment and tap into the global market The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday introduced a new 5G “open lab” in collaboration with US-based information technology and networking giant Cisco Systems Inc to address the rapidly growing “white box” 5G networking equipment market. The open lab will be a platform where Taiwanese manufacturers can access Cisco’s cloud-based mobile network to develop their own 5G telecom equipment, such as small-cell base stations, network switches, modems and Internet of things (IoT) devices, a ministry statement said. The open platform would allow Taiwanese manufacturers to tap into the lucrative 5G telecom equipment market, which was previously monopolized by Nokia Oyj, Ericsson AB
Nintendo Co is raising its target for Switch production to about 25 million units this fiscal year, people familiar with the matter said, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic keeps lifting demand and component shortages ease. The Kyoto, Japan-based company, which in April hiked orders to 22 million units by March next year, is asking partners to tack on another few million units, said the people, who did not want to be identified discussing internal goals. Assembly partners plan to work at maximum capacity through December. The new production target suggests that Nintendo is likely to outperform its Switch sales forecast of 19 million
‘BIG LOSS’: This year might see the last generation of Huawei’s Kirin chips, as their production would stop next month because they are made using US technology Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為) is running out of processor chips to make smartphones due to US sanctions and would be forced to stop production of its own most advanced chips, a company executive has said, in a sign of growing damage to Huawei’s business from US pressure. Huawei, one of the biggest producers of smartphones and network equipment, is at the center of US-Chinese tension over technology and security. Washington last year cut off Huawei’s access to US components and technology, and those penalties were tightened in May, when the White House barred vendors worldwide from using US
RSS